Читать книгу Welcome to Mills & Boon - Jennifer Rae - Страница 12
ОглавлениеWATER DRIPPED NOISILY from my raincoat to the flagstones as I walked nervously into the shadowy foyer of the castle. The thought of facing them all at once scared me to death.
Edward, Madison and Jason.
All at once.
I couldn’t do it. I stopped, clenched my hands at my sides.
Caesar loped up beside me in the foyer. With a sympathetic look, he shook his fur, splattering me with water and mud. I gasped as cold wet dirt hit my face, then gasped again as I looked down at my messed-up hair, my muddy raincoat and sneakers. I hadn’t buttoned the raincoat so even the T-shirt beneath, which Edward had recently groped, now had a splatter of mud across the front.
If I thought I couldn’t face them before...!
With a satisfied snort, Caesar trotted happily down the hall, no doubt intending to plunk himself in his nice spot on the rug in front of the fire. What did he have to fear? He wasn’t facing the firing squad.
I heard voices down the hall, coming from the library. Madison’s high-pitched voice, two lower masculine ones. Sharing tea, or lying in ambush for me?
Maybe I could make a run for it. If I tiptoed down the hall, I’d sneak by the library unseen. Then I’d pack my bag and flee for Tierra del Fuego.
“What are you doing?” Edward said quietly.
He was standing in the hallway, his face in silhouette. He’d showered and changed from his exercise clothes. His dark hair was still wet, slicked back against his head, and he was actually wearing a jacket and tie, button-up shirt and trousers. It was...sexy. I licked my lips. “Why are you dressed up?”
“We have company.” Flickering firelight from the open doorway of the library cast shadows on his grim face. “Care to join us?”
He was so handsome and sophisticated. Everything I was not. It seemed incredible to me now that he’d kissed me, for any reason whatsoever. I put my hand to my hair. Yup. Just as I thought, it was damp with rain, tangled as a bird’s nest. I put my hand down.
“Well?”
“I don’t think I can do this,” I whispered. My heart was pounding, my feet ready to take flight. “I thought about it on my walk. After all that’s happened, I’ve realized you don’t need me anymore and maybe it’s time for me to just—”
“Is that you, Diana?” Madison’s voice carried sharply from the library. “Get in here!”
Edward’s eyebrow lifted. He came closer, and I shivered as he pulled my raincoat off my body. I felt the brush of his fingertips. I breathed in his scent, masculine and clean, like a Bavarian forest. Hanging up the wet coat, he turned back to me.
“You’re going to have to face them sooner or later, Diana,” he said quietly. His hand fell bracingly on my shoulder. “Might as well be now.”
His camaraderie made me feel strangely comforted, even strengthened. That brief moment helped me square my shoulders, lift my chin and walk with my head held high into the library.
The firelit room was impossibly elegant, two stories high, with leatherbound books on all sides, a ladder to reach them and an enormous white marble fireplace at one end. Not to mention two movie stars sitting on the white leather sofa near the fire.
Madison looked beautiful as always. Her long blond hair was straight, her eyes huge beneath fake eyelashes, her cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass. Even casually dressed in a white cropped jacket of tousled fur, thousand-dollar silk blouse and size 0 toothpick jeans, no one could have mistaken her for anything but a movie star.
Jason sat beside her, his hand protectively on her knee. Handsome, broad shouldered and corn-fed like the Texas farm boy he’d once been, he looked different than he had just six months ago. The gloss of success covered him now, like his newly expensive clothes.
Looking at them, my body flashed hot, then cold. Jason started to rise to his feet, but Madison grabbed his hand, keeping him seated beside her.
“Diana,” she said coolly. “It was rude of you to keep us waiting. But I don’t blame you for being afraid to face me after what you did.”
I would have staggered back, except Edward was behind me, his hand supportively on my lower back. I felt his strength and somehow my knees steadied themselves.
“What I did?” I queried dangerously.
“You left me when I needed you most!”
I gaped at her. “I went to California to give the reporter a tour of your house—as you asked me to!”
She waved her hand dismissively. “That? All that happened ages ago. I’m talking about my movie premiere last night. You should have been there for me!”
“Are you kidding?” I breathed.
“You know how nervous I get, being at public events. You promised you’d always be there....”
“Yeah, when I was your assistant.” I swallowed looking between her and Jason. “Before I was completely humiliated in front of the whole world—”
“Are you still trying to punish me for that?” she demanded. “We didn’t mean to fall in love. It was an accident. When it’s right, you just know.” She looked lovingly at Jason, then glared at me. “It’s petty of you, Diana, it really is, and I’m disappointed. You and Jason didn’t even sleep together.”
“You told her that?” I breathed, staring down at him.
Rubbing the back of his blond head, Jason gave me the rueful smile I used to find so irresistible. “You and I were friends, Diana. We dated and yeah, there was a little flirting going on, but hell,” he shook his head, “you never let me touch you. Said you wanted to wait for true love or some such...but this is the twenty-first century. I don’t know what century you’re living in, but as far as I’m concerned, if there’s no sex, there’s no relationship.”
For a second I couldn’t breathe. No relationship? As if I’d imagined it all in my mind? “You—”
And it was then I saw the sparkle on Madison’s left hand.
A huge canary-yellow diamond ring.
On that finger.
With an intake of breath, I covered my mouth with my hand. For a moment, the only sound in the library was the crackle of the fire in counterpoint to the miserable drip-drip-drip of water from my hair as I stood like a mud-splattered, drowned rat in front of my beautiful stepsister, who had a ten-carat engagement ring on one hand, and the man I’d loved holding the other.
“You’re—” I was horrified to feel tears burning the backs of my eyelids as I looked between them. “You’re engaged?”
Madison put her hand over the ring. “Yes...” A smile softened the sharp lines of her face as she looked at Jason. “He asked me last night, after the premiere.”
Jason smiled back. Lifting her hand to his lips, he kissed it. “Best night of my life.”
Their eyes glowed as they looked at each other. They were in love. Really, deeply in love. It was one thing to know it in my mind, and something else entirely to see it right in front of me. I not only felt sick, I felt invisible. An echo went through my mind.
I feel sorry for you. How it must hurt to know they’ll never be punished for hurting you. That while you suffer, they’re making love in oblivious joy. You’re so meaningless, they’ve forgotten you even exist.
“Stop pouting and be happy for us.” Madison turned back to me. “Come back and work for me. I need you. Someone will have to coordinate with the wedding planner...”
Wedding planner!
“And don’t worry,” Jason said to me kindly. “You’ll find a real boyfriend someday, Di. Great girl like you. It’s bound to happen, even if it takes a while...”
Violently, I held up a trembling hand, unable to bear another patronizing word. My heart was collapsing in my chest, squeezing into hard little pieces, about to fly out of my ribs like bullets. In another moment, I’d weep in front of them, and then I really would have to die.
“Darling.” Edward purred behind me, suddenly wrapping his arms around me. Pulling me back protectively against his body, he murmured, “Didn’t you tell them?”
I looked back at him blankly. “Tell them?”
He smiled down at me, his expression tender, his dark blue gaze caressing mine. “About us.”
“Us?” I said.
“Us.” Edward looked at me as if it were all he could do right now not to lift me up in his arms and carry me upstairs to bed. No man had looked at me like that before. Not ever. The full seductive force of his gaze was a blast of heat, an intoxicating drug that made every part of me yearn to tremble and unfold like a flower. “Diana, why didn’t you tell them...” he stroked back a tendril of my hair, “that we’re lovers?”
What? My heart stopped beating.
“What?” Madison said.
“What?” Jason said.
Edward looked down at me with concern. “But darling, you’re chilled to the bone. Your clothes are wet. Were you taking the dog on a walk?”
Teeth chattering—and not just from cold—I nodded like a fool.
He gave me a slow, sensual smile. “Why don’t you go upstairs to our room—” our room? I thought dumbly “—and change. We’ll wait.”
“I will not wait,” Madison snapped. “Not until you agree to come back and plan our wedding.” Looking between Edward and me, no doubt comparing his perfect gorgeousness to my slovenly mess, she added suspiciously, “And I don’t believe for a second that the two of you...”
Edward didn’t even look her way. “Actually, Diana,” he whispered, twining a long muddy, tangled tendril of my hair as if it were silken perfection, “I think I’ll come upstairs. Help you out of these cold, wet clothes.”
Any woman could get warm instantly, just by looking up into Edward’s hot dark gaze. Had I wandered into some strange parallel universe, where I was the beautiful movie star, instead of Madison? Had I fallen on my walk and hit my head on a rock?
I felt my stepsister’s gaze travel over us both, from the way I was standing to the way that Edward supported my arm. There was new doubt in her melodious voice as she said, “You’re really—together?”
“Only recently,” Edward said, smiling down at me hungrily, cupping my cheek with his hand. As if he were already thinking about what he intended to do to me in bed. “I wanted Diana from the moment we met. But she tortured me,” his eyes traced mine, “making me wait. And wait. The sexiest, most desirable woman in the world.”
“She’s just a physical therapist.” Madison sounded grumpy.
Edward finally looked at her. “Yes. A healer. And what Diana knows about the human body—” He exhaled, looking at me in wonder. “No wonder she’s the most amazing lover I’ve ever had.”
My body flashed hot, then cold.
“The two of you are in love?” Jason said, dumbfounded.
“Love?” Edward snorted. “No.” He looked down at me, stroking my cheek, and I felt his fingertips against my skin. “What we have is purely physical. Sex. And fire.”
A little sound came from the back of Jason’s throat as he stared between us, his eyes comically huge.
“I don’t understand.” Madison’s beautiful face was bewildered, as if she was confused how any other woman could be the center of a man’s attention when she herself was in the room. “It’s only been a couple months.”
“When it’s right, you just know.” He smiled as he echoed her earlier words. Wrapping both his strong arms around me, he pulled me back against his chest. “I’m sorry Diana’s not available to be your assistant, Madison. But after your long trip from London, perhaps the two of you will join us for dinner?”
“Uh.” Jason couldn’t stop staring at me, as if he’d never quite seen me before. “I don’t think...”
“Of course we will.” Madison looked at Edward with new, almost proprietary interest. “I look forward to getting to know your new boyfriend, Diana.”
“Good,” Edward replied, as if he hadn’t noticed her sudden pointed look, like a cat who’d just noticed a particularly appealing mouse. But I’d noticed it. And by the crease in his forehead, so had Jason. “Please excuse us while I take Diana upstairs.” His voice lingered wickedly on the word take. “In the meantime help yourselves to tea, or there’s drinks at the bar if you’d like something stronger.”
Edward pulled me out into the hall.
“I need something stronger,” I muttered.
“Hsst,” he said beneath his breath. Holding my hand, he drew me down the echoing flagstones of the dark hallway and up the sweeping stairs. It wasn’t until we were at my bedroom door that I stopped, looking at him with my brow creased.
“You made them think we were lovers.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I felt like it.”
I swallowed, shaking my head. “I don’t understand.”
Edward’s eyes narrowed. “They were treating you so badly. Trying to guilt you into planning their wedding. Don’t worry, you’ll find a real boyfriend someday,” he mimicked Jason, then snorted with a flare of nostril. “Supercilious, condescending prats.”
An unwilling laugh burbled to my lips, then faded. “But maybe they were right,” I said softly, looking down. “I should have known he’d choose Madison over me. And I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m starting to think I’ll never—”
“Don’t be an idiot.” He put his hand against my cheek. “You could have any man you want, any time you want. If you don’t have one at the moment, it’s by your choice.”
I swallowed, looking up at him. “You’re being very kind, but...”
“I’m not kind.” He paused. “I just didn’t like them treating you as if you were invisible. As if you were nobody.”
“I am nobody,” I whispered.
Dropping his hand, he gave a low heartfelt curse. “For the last two months, you’ve matched me toe-to-toe, like a fighter. An equal. But the instant you walked into the library, you changed into a timid little mouse. What happened?”
“Why do you care?” I forced myself to meet his eyes. “You were running on the treadmill today, Edward. You don’t even need a physical therapist anymore.” I shook my head a little tearfully. “It’s time for me to—”
“Oh, no, you don’t,” he said furiously. “Don’t even think about using that as an excuse to run away. Why do I care? Because I don’t like to see the woman who regularly brings me to my knees—that’s you—falling apart at the feet of those vapid, self-absorbed idiots!”
“When did I bring you to your knees?” I said stupidly.
He looked down at me. “Have you already forgotten,” he said softly, “how just two hours ago, I took you in my arms and begged you to make love to me? I was putty in your hands.”
A shiver went over me, starting from my tingling, bruised lips. Tossing my head, I tried to laugh. “I don’t remember any begging—”
My sentence cut off as he pulled me abruptly into his arms. His fingertips stroked down my cheek, skimming lightly down my jaw, my neck. I trembled beneath his touch, feeling the warm caress of his breath, the heat of his powerful body against mine.
“This is how I beg,” he whispered, his lips close to mine, making me burn, making me lose my breath. Slowly, he kissed me, softly, so softly. “You’re strong, Diana. And brave.” His lips flickered like a whisper of breath against mine. “Why are you suddenly pretending not to be?” He moved back, and his expression changed, almost to a glare. “I want the woman I hired, the one who’s constantly trying to kick my ass. Bring her back.”
I licked my lips. “It’s hard...”
“No. It’s easy. Be your real self again, or get the hell out of my house.”
My lips parted in shock. It was funny. I’d been planning to leave Penryth Hall, talking myself into it. But the thought of Edward kicking me out suddenly felt unbearable.
“You’re firing me?” I said faintly. The way he looked at me made me shiver. My heart pounded, and my lips tingled in memory. “You don’t understand. Madison and I have a history. And Jason—” My voice stopped.
“You still love him?” His eyes grew hard. “You’re a fool. But that’s what love does,” he said grimly. “Makes us fools.”
Thinking of Jason, sitting next to Madison on the couch as he said patronizingly, If there’s no sex, there’s no relationship, I shook my head. “I don’t know what I feel anymore.”
“Whatever. Doesn’t matter. Pull yourself together. You’re better than this, Diana. And I’m not interested in watching you let them wipe their feet on you.” He glared at me. “Either stop acting like a doormat or you can ask them for a ride back to London.”
I stared up at him, feeling faint, assaulted on all sides. How I wished I could be the woman he described—the one who was brave and strong. But the thought of facing them and telling them what I really thought.... Jason...and Madison...
“I don’t think I can do it,” I choked out.
“You have twenty minutes to decide.” Edward’s jaw tightened. Turning away, he stopped at the bedroom door. “Take a shower. Brush your hair. Get on dry clothes. When you come back downstairs for dinner, I’ll see your answer.”
* * *
My legs were shaking as I came downstairs a half hour later. I’d taken my time in the shower, closing my eyes beneath the hot steam. I combed out my wet hair, then started to reach in the closet for my typical wardrobe of casual T-shirt and cargo pants. Then I stopped.
Instead, I took out a skirt and blouse, and black high-heeled shoes. I put on red lipstick, which I’d almost forgotten I owned, and a headband. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. It looked like me, but not me. It looked like the me that I used to be, in high school. Before Mom had gotten sick. Before Madison had taken the dream I’d wanted.
You’re strong, Diana. And brave. Why are you suddenly pretending not to be?
As I came downstairs, I could hear that the three of them had already started dinner without me in the medieval great hall. Well, Edward had told me twenty minutes. He was probably starting to wonder if I’d decided to pack for London.
I was still wondering myself.
I could play it safe, say nothing tonight and quietly leave with Madison, back to my old life. I could plan their wedding, be silently helpful and invisible.
Or—
Or I could be brave enough to be myself. And tell Jason and Madison how I really felt. Then I could remain at Penryth Hall—but I’d almost certainly end up in Edward’s bed.
Let him keep your heart. I will have your body. Very soon. And we both know it.
Yes. I swallowed. If I stayed here, it would happen. Sooner or later. Probably sooner. I wouldn’t be able to resist for much longer. I’d give my virginity to a playboy who wanted only a physical affair. It would be just sex, as he’d said.
Sex. And fire.
I felt dizzy just thinking of it.
So which would it be?
Remain invisible, mute and untouched?
Or risk everything, be honest and brave—but know that it would irrevocably change my life?
Standing outside the great hall, I still didn’t know. I was caught between longing and fear. But I was already late. Clutching my hands into fists, I took a deep breath and walked in.
Madison had appropriated the place of honor at the long, candlelit dining table, with Jason on her right side and Edward on her left. Edward saw me, and his expression sharpened.
“You’re here,” he said, motioning toward the place to his left. Avoiding his gaze, I slid quietly into the chair beside him at the table.
Glancing at me dismissively, my stepsister didn’t break stride in her story, which was mostly explaining the unbearable burdens of being young, rich, famous and beautiful. “You’d think I’d be used to press junkets by now,” she finished with a sigh, moving her hands gracefully over the long, gleaming table, to make her enormous diamond ring sparkle in the candlelight. “But the one this morning was especially exhausting. They barely let me plug the movie. They just wanted to know about our engagement.” She gave Jason a flirtatious sideways glance. “They wanted every detail. How he proposed, when the wedding will be...” Madison turned to me. “Why did you take so long, Diana? We’re halfway through our dinner.”
It was worth it, to miss most of your story, I thought. But I didn’t have the nerve to say it.
“Sorry,” I mumbled, and reaching for the silver tray at the center of the table, I pulled off the lid and served myself some rosemary lamb, herbed red potatoes and vegetables. Then I saw the basket, and gave a happy smile. “Mrs. MacWhirter made fresh rolls!”
“I asked her to, this morning,” Edward said, smiling back. “I know they’re your favorite.”
“Bread makes you fat, you know,” Madison said.
But skipping bread makes you mean, I thought. I said only, “Aren’t Damian and Luis joining us?”
“They’re eating in the kitchen with the staff.”
“Smart,” I mumbled.
“What?” Madison said.
“Nothing.” I sighed. I felt Edward tighten up beside me. I could almost feel his glower.
I tried to eat, but sitting with Madison and Edward I could barely taste the food. Even the freshly baked white bun tasted ashy.
“Anyway,” Madison continued, “sometimes I just get tired of all the attention.” She yawned in a showy way, stretching her hands upward, showing off her figure to clear advantage. Then she flashed her beguiling smile, her trademark that no man could resist, first at Jason, then—at Edward. “Our engagement is news all over the world. My fans everywhere are thrilled... They’re so sweet, sending congratulations and gifts.” She gave a tinkly laugh that sounded like music. “Though I’ve had a few male fans threaten to throw themselves out windows unless I cancel the wedding. You know how it is, I’m sure.” Reaching out, she patted Edward’s hand. “How difficult it is, when people want you constantly.”
My eyes went wide as I stared at Madison’s perfectly manicured hand. Patting over Edward’s. Slowly. Languorously. Like a dance.
Pat, pat, pat.
With the same hand that held the ten-carat diamond engagement ring given to her by another man.
She wanted Edward’s attention now, too, I realized. Why was I surprised? It had happened all our lives. Madison always had to be the center of male approval. Even when we were teenagers, and my mother was dying, Madison had snuck away with the pool cleaner and smashed her father’s car into a palm tree—effectively pulling Howard’s attention away from my mom.
All our lives, I’d tried to look out for Madison. I’d tried to treat her like the sister I’d always wanted, back when I was a lonely only child. But she’d just taken from me, and taken more.
But as I watched her hand with the huge diamond ring pat Edward’s on the table—pat, pat, pat—I suddenly couldn’t stand it one second more.
“Are you seriously flirting with Edward now?” I said incredulously. “What the hell is wrong with you, Madison?”
She stared at me, her gorgeous pink mouth a round O. Then she ripped her hand off Edward’s as if it had burned her. “I wasn’t flirting with him! I’m an engaged woman!” She glared at me, then turned to give her fiancé a tender glance. “I’m in love with Jason.”
“Are you? Are you really? Do you even know what it means?”
“Of course I do—we’re engaged!”
“So what? You’ve been engaged five times!”
“Really?” Edward said, looking at me with growing joy.
“Five?” Jason gasped.
“You’re crazy!” she said in outrage. Then, as the two men stared at her, she moderated her expression and said more calmly, “I haven’t been engaged five times.”
“No? Let’s see.” I tilted my head thoughtfully. “That punk rock musician you met on Hollywood Boulevard...”
“You call that an engagement?” Glancing at Jason and Edward, she trilled a little laugh. “I was fifteen! It lasted six days!”
“But Rhiannon never talked to you again.”
Madison tossed her head. “He loved me, not her. She should have accepted that.”
“Yes. He loved you. For six days, till his band left for Las Vegas. For that, you destroyed a friendship you’d had since kindergarten.” I lifted an eyebrow and inquired coolly, “How many friends do you have left now, by the way, Maddy?”
She looked at me in wide-eyed fury. “I have plenty of friends, believe me!”
“Friends. People who suck up to you,” I murmured. “People who need something from you. People who laugh at your jokes even when they’re not funny. Are those really friends? Or are they employees?”
“Shut up!”
Picking up my fork, I idly traced it along my plate, crushing my potatoes against the gold-rimmed china, creating a pattern like tracks through snow. “Then when you were sixteen, there was the man who cleaned our pools...”
“A pool cleaner? That wasn’t an engagement, it was a cry for help!”
“Right.” I gave her a tight smile. “You were trying to get Howard’s attention. He’d been neglecting you, spending so much time at my mom’s deathbed. Drove you crazy.”
She tossed me an irritated, petulant glance. “You make me sound selfish, but for months and months it dragged on. A girl needs her father!”
The casual cruelty of her words took my breath away. For months and months it dragged on. Yes. It had taken my mom months and months to die. Months of her fighting her illness with courage, long after hope was gone. Months of her fading away, so sweet and brave, still trying so hard to take care of everyone, even Madison. My jaw hardened.
“I know. I was there. Every day. All day.” I ticked off another finger in a violent gesture. “Third engagement. My agent.”
“Your agent?” Edward said in surprise.
“Yeah.” I looked at him. “We met at Howard’s wrap party for a film. Lenny signed me when I was almost seventeen. I worked on a soap opera for about six months before Mom got sick.”
“You were on a television show?” he said incredulously.
“I quit to stay home with her.” And I’d quit without regret. I’d missed my friends, and the tutor was a poor replacement for school. I’d felt lonely. “I didn’t try to act again until months later, when my agent sent me a script. He wanted to pitch me as a ‘fresh new face’ to star in a Disney show for preteens. My mom convinced me to go to the audition. But on my way there, I got a message from Howard that Mom had just had a seizure. He wasn’t sure she’d make it....” My lips quivered at the edges. “She did. That time. But when I went back to do the audition two days later, the part was gone. The show had already hired someone else.” I turned to look at Madison. “Moxie McSocksie made you a star.”
Edward frowned. “Moxie what?”
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it.” I turned to him wearily. “Moxie. You know. Regular student by day, adventurous cub reporter by night. It was a huge hit.”
“Moxie Mc—” Frowning, he looked at Madison, his eyes wide. “I remember. Your face was on the side of buses for months when the show came to London. It was your big break, wasn’t it? Made you famous. Made you rich.”
Wide-eyed, Madison looked from Edward, to Jason, to me. She abruptly slapped her hands hard against the table.
“I deserved the role, not you!” she cried in a shrill voice. “I’d been doing commercials since I was a baby! I was the actress, not you. And you were eighteen by then, Diana, way too old for the role!”
“Compared to you?”
“I was seventeen—the perfect age!”
“For getting engaged to my agent?” I said dryly. “The second you heard about the role, you went for him. You knew he could get you that audition, and more. He could get you the career you wanted.”
“You make it sound sordid,” she gasped, putting her manicured hand against her chest in a fake laugh. “It wasn’t like that!”
“Oh?” I said coolly. “So you didn’t seduce him to get him to take you on as a client, and sell you to the show?”
“You’re jealous! It’s not my fault you gave up the audition and rushed home. The next day, when Lenny and I spent time together, he realized I was the perfect Moxie, not you. That’s all!”
“He was fifty,” I said.
“I loved him!”
“You dumped him fast enough, after he got you your first movie role, and you realized that dating a big Hollywood director would help you further up the ladder. You didn’t mind that he had to break up with his wife to do it.”
“Enough.” Jason rose from the table, his face like granite. He looked at Madison. “So I’m number five, am I?”
“You’re different,” she whispered. “Special.”
“I don’t feel special.” Jason looked at me. “I’m starting to think I chose the wrong sister.”
Madison looked frightened. “Jason—”
“Here.” Reaching into his pocket, he tossed a set of car keys onto the table. They skittered helter-skelter down the long polished wood. “I’m taking a car back to London. I’ll leave the keys at the front desk of your hotel.”
“Wait,” she said desperately, rising to her feet. “You can’t leave. I need you—”
He left without a backward glance.
Madison staggered back.
“Does this mean the wedding is off?” Edward inquired pleasantly.
Ignoring him, she slowly turned to face me. “Diana. I know I’ve done a lot of stupid and selfish things. But I never thought you would be the one to list them out. Not you.”
The injured fury in my heart deserted me, just when I needed it most. I rose to my feet.
“I never thought you would attack me like that.” Her crystalline eyes glimmered in the candlelight. Her voice caught as she looked away. “You’re not my big sister. You’re just like all the rest.”
My throat suddenly hurt as I remembered how we first met, virtual strangers to each other attending our parents’ wedding as slightly-too-old flower girls, both feeling awkward, uncertain. My mom had told me Madison’s mother died of a drug overdose when she was a toddler. So be nice to her, she’d chided.
Seeing her sad little face, I’d wanted to protect her. We’re family now, I’d said at the wedding, hugging her over the flowers. I’m gonna be your big sister, Maddy. So don’t worry. I’ll take care of you.
“Maddy—” I whispered.
“Forget it,” Madison choked out. “Just forget it.”
She turned away in a cloud of grief and expensive perfume, stumbling out of Penryth Hall, calling Jason’s name, then her bodyguards’.
The great hall was suddenly quiet, the only sound the whipping of the wind outside rattling the glass panes of the windows.
Edward looked at me.
“I wondered what it would be like, if you ever really let yourself go,” he said quietly. “Now I know.”
A sob lifted to my throat. My knees wobbled beneath me, and suddenly Edward was there, catching me before I could fall. I stared up at him in bewilderment, wondering how he’d moved so fast.
“I was horrible,” I whispered.
“You were magnificent,” he said softly, brushing hair from my face.
“Magnificent?” I gave a harsh laugh. “I was so determined to list all her faults. But what I’ve done is worse.”
“What’s that?”
“I told her I’d always take care of her,” I whispered. “Then I hurt her like this....”
“Seems like she had it coming,” he said softly, caressing my cheek.
I shuddered at his touch, longing for his comfort, fighting the desire to turn my cheek into his caress. “All these years I’ve blamed her for taking the role that might have made me a star. But it was never mine in the first place. She was right. I had the chance to audition. I went home.”
“To be with your mother...”
“Whatever the reason. It was a choice I made.” I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “After losing my parents, and the role of Moxie, I never wanted to have my heart crushed again. It’s not Madison’s fault I spent the next ten years hiding, not letting myself feel or want too much....”
“Until you fell for Jason,” he said.
But was Jason the exception? Or had he just been one more example of me taking the safe path? The thought was new and troubling.
Swallowing, I looked up at Edward through shimmering tears.
“It wasn’t Madison’s fault,” I whispered. “I did it to myself. I chose to be a coward.” My voice caught as I turned away. “Playing it safe has ruined my life.”
Edward said quietly, “Your life isn’t over yet.”
Our eyes locked in the shadowy great hall. An almost palpable electricity crackled between us.
“I have a private island in the Caribbean,” he said huskily. “That’s where I’d go if I needed to escape a broken heart. I stayed there after my accident. I needed to be alone.” He gave a grim smile. “Well, alone with a doctor and two round-the-clock nurses.” Reaching out, he gently twisted a long tendril of my hair. “No one can get at you there, Diana. There’s no internet, no phones, no way to even get on the island except by my plane.” He gave me a smile. “Want to go?”
Looking up at him, I tried to smile back, but couldn’t quite manage. “Thanks, but it wouldn’t help.” I looked down at my hands. “Not when the person I want to escape from is myself.”
Reaching out, Edward tilted up my chin, forcing me to meet his gaze. His dark blue eyes gleamed with silver and sapphire light, like the half-bright sky at dawn. “I understand,” he said quietly. “Better than you might think.”
“You do?” I whispered. Of its own will, my hand reached up to stroke his tousled black hair. It was so thick, and soft, just as I’d thought it would be. Five o’clock shadow traced the sharp edges of his jaw. Everything about him was masculine and foreign to me. I didn’t understand him at all. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
He gave a sudden crooked smile. “Maybe it’s just to lure you in my bed.” His hand moved gently from my hair to my cheek. “Did you ever think of that?”
I gave a tearful, hiccupping laugh. “You don’t have to try this hard for me.”
“I don’t?”
I looked up at him.
“No,” I whispered.
His hand froze on my cheek. His expression changed as he looked down at me.
Cupping my face in his large, strong hands, Edward lowered his mouth to mine, slowly, deliberately. I could have pulled back from his embrace at any time. But I didn’t move. I held my breath in anticipation as time suspended.
Then his lips finally touched mine, and I exhaled with a sigh. My breath comingled and joined with his. His lips were tantalizingly soft at first, sweet and warm. He lured me in, made me lean forward against his chest, reaching up to wrap my arms around his shoulders. Then he shifted me in his grip. As he held me more tightly, the world started to whirl around us.
He’d seen me at my worst, but he still wanted me....
His kiss deepened, became hungrier, more demanding. I clutched his hard, powerful body to my own, like a woman seeking shelter in a storm. Edward was solid, like a fortress in my arms. And if somewhere in the back of my mind, a voice shouted at me to stop, telling me this would destroy me, I pushed it away. I clutched Edward to me, kissing him with every cell in my body, my skin hot with need.
I was tired of being safe.
With a low growl, Edward lifted me up into his arms. Leaving the great hall, he carried me up the sweeping stairs.
Held against his chest, I looked up at him, dazed, lost in desire. I watched the play of shadows against his hard, handsome face as he carried me up the stairs. He carried my weight like a feather.
Edward St. Cyr was taking me to his bed. In just moments, my virginity would irrevocably be taken by this cold playboy, this breaker of hearts.
But he was so much more than that.
Lifting my hand to his cheek in wonder, I felt the roughness of his skin, the dark bristles along the hard edge of his jaw. He was so powerful. So masculine. So different from me in every way.
And yet somehow, tonight, I felt we were not so different. Out of anyone on earth, Edward understood me. He’d seen the scared girl I’d been, and the bold woman I wanted to be. He knew me....
Using his shoulder, Edward pushed open his bedroom door. I’d never been inside it before. The room was dark with shadows. Dark, Spartan furniture lined the edges of the walls.
A large white bed was at the center of the black-lacquered floor, illuminated by a pool of moonlight from the window like a spotlight.
Kicking the door closed behind us, Edward gently set me down on the moonswept, king-size bed. He hadn’t said a word since we’d left the great hall. I looked up at him, shivering in my headband and simple skirt and blouse. I was twenty-eight years old, but felt as innocent as a schoolgirl.
Never taking his eyes off me, Edward slowly pulled off his tie. He dropped it to the lacquered floor. He moved toward the bed.
And I started to shake.
Moonlight glazed the bed around me as his strong hands tangled in my hair. “This is the first thing to go,” he murmured, and he pulled my headband aside. Bracing his arms on the mattress around me, he leaned forward. Gently, he kissed me. His mouth seared mine, pushing my lips apart as he pushed me back against the bed.
My head fell back against the soft pillows, and he gave my cheeks little feather-soft kisses before returning to my mouth. His tongue flicked possessively between my lips before he trailed kisses down my throat. My head tilted back as I gave a soft gasp. Feeling lost. Feeling new.
“I don’t love you,” I breathed—speaking to him? Or myself?
“No.” His dark blue eyes gleamed. “You want me. Say it.”
My voice was almost too quiet to hear. “I want you.”
“Louder.”
I lifted my gaze. “I want you.”
My voice had turned strong. Dangerous. Reckless.
He looked at me with such intensity I forgot to breathe.
“And I want you.”
Lowering his mouth hard against my own, Edward pushed me deeper into the soft white pillows. His hands stroked slowly down my body, light as a whisper, hot as a desert wind. His kiss deepened. Reaching down, he cupped my breasts that were aching beneath my prim white shirt.
I barely felt his fingertips move against my blouse. The buttons were just suddenly undone, and the unwilling thought crossed my mind that he’d had a lot of experience. He pulled my body up, and my blouse vanished into thin air, revealing my flimsy bra of blue silk.
What had made me wear my only truly pretty bra today, underneath my blouse? A coincidence? Or had I known, even before I came downstairs for dinner, that I intended to end my night this way?
“So beautiful,” he whispered, his hands touching everywhere, sliding over my bare skin. “You’ve been driving me mad....”
“Me too...” I breathed. We’d been both alone, I realized, both wounded deep inside, in injuries we’d caused ourselves. But in this moment, it felt like loneliness no longer existed. My heart and my arms were both overflowing. We were together. We were the same....
I pulled him down hard against my body, wanting to feel his weight over mine. I heard the appreciative murmur from the back of his throat as I kissed him, hard, and tried to unbutton his shirt. My hands were trembling and clumsy.
“Stop,” he said huskily, putting his hands over mine. For a moment, I was afraid he’d changed his mind. Then I realized he was unbuttoning his shirt for me, his expert fingers doing it three times as fast. Rising from the bed, he unbuttoned his cuffs and dropped his expensive tailored shirt to the dark floor. I gasped when I saw the muscles and planes of his naked chest, lit by the slanted moonlight. I’d seen his body before, during massage and occasionally when I’d taken him to swim at the local center. But never like this. Never with the full knowledge that I could run my hands over his skin, that I’d soon feel his naked body roughly take my own.
Edward’s eyes never left mine as he deliberately undid his trousers and pulled them with his silk boxers down his thickly chiseled thighs. A choked noise came from the back of my throat as he stood naked in front of me. He’d been naked in the gym that morning, but I’d been afraid to look. I was still a little afraid now. Blushing, I started to look away.
His gaze locked with mine, challenging me. With a deep breath, I lifted my chin, and looked, really looked, at his naked body.
He was not ashamed, standing there with quiet pride and giving me time to look, to accept. His shoulders were broad, and a dusting of dark hair trailed like a V from his nipples and hard-muscled chest down to a taut, flat waist. His legs were powerful as a warrior’s, and as he shifted his weight in front of me, he moved with an athlete’s grace. His thighs were hard and huge. Which could also describe what I saw if I dared to look between his thighs... But there my nerve failed me.
He was powerful. He’d been healed. But the injuries had left scars that couldn’t be denied. The raised scars across his torso, where his ribs had been broken, left white lines across perfect olive-toned skin. Similar lines slashed brutally across his right shoulder and arm, and his left leg, like cobwebs of his body’s memory, forgiven but not forgotten.
Men prey on the tender weakness of the feminine heart, Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley had warned. He will lure you into bed by using your own heart against you.
Turning away, I squeezed my eyes shut. The mattress moved beneath me. I felt Edward come closer, felt the warmth of his body as he said in a low voice, “What is it?”
“This is wrong,” I whispered. “You are my patient.”
“It’s wrong,” he agreed.
My eyes flew open.
He was looking down at me with a glint in his eye. “You’re sacked, Miss Maywood. Effective immediately.”
I gave an indignant squeak. “You’re firing me?”
“You said it yourself.” He quirked a dark eyebrow. “I don’t need a physio anymore. What I need...” Reaching out, he slowly stroked down the valley of my breasts, “is a lover.”
Lover. I shivered at the word. So erotic. So suggestive. Not just of sensual delights, but emotional ones.
“You want me to be your girlfriend?” I breathed.
“No.” He gave a low laugh. “Not a girlfriend. Just my friend. And my lover. For as long as we enjoy it.” Lowering his head, he kissed my naked belly, making me shiver at the sensation of his lips and rough chin and tiny flick of his tongue against my belly button. He looked up. “This isn’t a commitment. I won’t be asking you to the movies with a box of chocolates, asking to meet your family.” His eyes narrowed. “I am not nice, Diana. I look out for myself. I expect you to do the same.” His lips lifted at the edges. “For all I know, you’ll soon go back to Jason Black.”
“I—”
“It doesn’t matter,” he cut me off. “I don’t expect you to stay with me forever. It’s fine,” he said lightly, searching my face. “I wouldn’t want to get too accustomed to you.”
I am not nice, Diana. I look out for myself. I expect you to do the same. When a man tells you something bad about himself, that is the time to listen. I stared up at him in the shadows of the bed, hearing only my own ragged breath, my own heartbeat, as I tried to focus on his words. But I was distracted, burning hot with his naked body over mine.
Don’t lie to yourself about what the end will be, Mrs. Warreldy-Gribbley had warned. If you forget yourself and let him lure you into his sensual designs—
But I didn’t want to think about her anymore. The woman had written the book in 1910, I thought irritably. What did she know? I shut the book in my mind, locking it away forever.
And I smiled up at Edward. “Good to know,” I said, matching his light tone. “I wouldn’t want to get too accustomed to you either. I have things to do in life.”
“Do you?” he said, sounding amused. Then, moving closer, he looked at me. My heart pounded as his breathtakingly beautiful face, just inches from mine, was illuminated in moonlight, making him look like a dark angel. “Yes,” he murmured. “I think you do. You’re meant for great things in life, Diana.”
My lips parted, and I felt suddenly tearful for no good reason, other than that no one had ever said such a thing to me. No one, not since my mother had died—
“Great things,” Edward whispered again, lowering his head to mine. His lips curved wickedly. “Starting with tonight...”
He kissed me, his hands stroking down the length of my body, slowly removing the last of my clothes, my skirt, my cotton stockings. He ran his hand appreciatively along my hips, my thighs. My breasts. He unclasped my bra so easily, he practically just looked at it to make it spring open. Dropping the flimsy blue silk off my body, he cupped one of my breasts with both hands. I sucked in my breath, my whole body taut.
He pulled away with a low curse.
“I forgot you’re a virgin.” He shook his head with an irritated growl. “So let me make this really clear for you. One more time. For the sake of my own conscience.”
“I thought you didn’t have one,” I said weakly.
“This is all I can give you.” His eyes met mine. “No marriage. No children. All I can offer is—this.” He kissed me, feather-light, running down my bare, trembling throat, to my clavicle. I felt his hands cup my naked breasts, felt his fingers lightly squeeze the full, heavy flesh. He lowered his mouth with agonizing slowness to an aching nipple, then stopped at the last moment. He looked up at me. “Do you agree?”
As he spoke, his lips and breath brushed my taut nipple, and I shook beneath him, lost in desire, lost in pleasure, lost.
He was offering cheap, no-strings sex. No marriage. No children. Not even love.
So? I thought suddenly. What had love ever done for me? Only broken my heart.
This was better than love.
“Yes.” I whispered, reaching for him. “Yes...”
Then his lips came down on my skin, his tongue swirling my nipple as he suckled me, and I gasped, gripping the sheets.
